Today’s screening: Kiss Me Deadly (1955) February 10, 2010

For the ninth meeting of the Electric Sheep Film Club at the Prince Charles Cinema off Leicester Square, here’s your antidote to forthcoming Valentine soppiness: promising ‘red-blood kisses’ and ‘white-hot thrills’, Kiss Me Deadly is a noir classic that has lost none of its power to shock and surprise.

Robert Aldrich’s Kiss Me Deadly

Take the money, do not open the box! - a still from Kiss Me Deadly by Robert Aldrich

From classic noir writer Mickey Spillane and the director of Whatever happened to Baby Jane comes this lurid thriller, with SF elements that influenced Raiders of the Lost Ark and Repo Man. Private investigator Mike Hammer, a thuggish, macho anti-hero, is drawn into a bottomless pit of conspiracy and corruption after picking up a mysterious and beautiful hitch-hiker. Exposing the black soul of America in the atomic age, this is as hard-boiled as it gets.

FILM WRITING COMPETITION:
Film students and aspiring film writers are invited to enter our film writing competition: write a 200-word review of Kiss Me Deadly and send it to ladyvengeance [at] electricsheepmagazine.com, marked ‘Film writing competition’ in the subject line. Jason Wood, director of programming at Curzon Cinemas, film journalist and author of 100 American Independent Films and 100 Road Movies among others, will select the best review. Deadline: Thursday 25 February. The selected review will be published on the Electric Sheep website in March. This is a regular feature of the Electric Sheep Film Club. You can read November’s winning review of Repulsion here.